Having directly shot a laser beam at Kingsley, Ann was showing off her ruthlessness and overall don't-give-a-shit attitude.
Unfortunately for us, or fortunately for him, he had noticed her move just in time to avoid it.
His legs glowed blue as a trail of scorched earth was left from where he was to where he is now.
"Woah there Sally, no need to be so pushy. But, if you continue getting in my way, you'll leave me with no choice."
"Oh really? Well, first; my name is not 'Sally', it's Ann. And second; you're right, you no longer have a choice in the matter. Now kneel!"
And as if to back all that up, Ann directly utilized White Knight to its fullest extent.
Donned with her white and radiant armor, she then held out a hand where a ball of light quickly coalesced.
The threads coming out of her spikes quickly wove themselves to the ball, quickly making it swell to a whopping twenty meters (over sixty feet) in diameter—as tall as a six-story apartment building.
The aura released from her being got more and more explosive until it dispelled the stagnant air Kingsley had produced. No longer was Ran feeling nauseous and no longer was everyone shaken.
But this was the least shocking thing. Normally, Ann's attacks would release immense amounts of heat, even just ambiently. Not this time. The ball was completely silent in this regard—it was completely contained.
And this… this was a sign that Ann was no longer taking things easy and was serious.
In reality, as everyone should know, releasing that much energy as heat like that is terribly inefficient and leads to a loss of power. But this was always an easy problem to solve for Ann, even more now that she had achieved rank-5. It all came down to your concentration or control of your juice. In other words, if heat is expelled from her, it's either because it's too powerful to contain, or she's too lazy to do anything about it.
But, Kingsley was simply not fazed by it.
"Uh, you want me to do… what, exactly? And anyway, what is that? Are you actually being serious right now? At least, if you're going to try and kill me, do it right. This is no time to be playing handball."
He thought it was a nice quip and that it was a well deserved tongue lashing, however lackluster it actually was, but it appeared to have been thrown back at him.
"Oh? Then I'd like to see you catch it."
And before he knew it, the ball quickly shrunk from twenty meters to a single meter (a bit over three feet). Originally, before ranking up, the ball could only be enlarged to ten meters and shrunk to a single meter. The important part was that it had shrunk by ten times its size. But now, everything has doubled; both its expansion and contraction.
And now, because of how tense the ball was at this stage, her control was slightly lacking, letting some of the heat escape. And it was in that moment that everything within ten feet of her spontaneously caught fire. If Ann hadn't stepped in at the last moment pretty much everyone would be on fire right now.
Everyone then backed up, but Ran laid back particularly farther than the rest. After all, what could be worse than his precious clothes being burned… again. And oh gosh, what if his beloved hair got caught on fire—he would literally die. And as the author, I can actually guarantee that. After all, I'm the same author that disposed of Rans actual blood-pumping heart within the first twenty chapters so… you know.
Cough, anyways! Kingsley, if you still remember him at this point, now had a change of face. He clearly had underestimated her, but he now had to take everything slightly more serious.
"So… still want to play," Ann asked mockingly, a smirk pulling at her lips.
"I‐I don't know what you're talking—"
And just like that, before Kingsley was even able to finish speaking, Ann lobbed the ball of light at him, leaving a trail of flames in its wake.
After dodging it, he looked back at her with a really trashy look on his face, but the next moment, his face changed once again.
When the ball landed behind him, the tension it had accumulated was released all at once; it, in a fraction of a second, grew past its original size and expanded even further to over thirty meters (a hundred feet). A pit of that size was now embedded in the earth, and the soil was completely black and dry; all the snow around it had already disappeared.
After all, it was never meant to explode, only expand, so it ended up expanding up to Kingsley, catching his behind on fire.
His eyes almost popped out of his skull from the pain, and he had to slap his butt a couple times to get rid of the flames, but now he was more infuriated than ever. Luckily, nobody had the wherewithal to laugh, or the plot would have to speed up.
With fury building up in him, his chest began glowing a sparkling blue as his sigil projected itself on his navel. It was blue of course, it appeared to have an image of a cloud with lightning striking below it.
Then, with the opening of his mouth, a blue orb showed itself. It grew more powerful and after a few seconds, the power within it reached a tipping point, which was released a moment later.
A thick beam of lightning escaped the orb and shot towards Ann at a speed equal to that of her laser beams. But, she had prepared, as she wasn't doing anything. She currently had two balls floating above both her hands and when Kingsley launched his attack, she too threw her balls (?) at him.
The three attacks collided and to everyone's surprise, the lightning beam ripped right through the balls and dispersed them into uncontrollable liquid. Only then did everyone realize that Kingsley was actually rank-5, just like Ann.
This particularly frightened Queenie; they were born on the same day, and they had the same age, but there was now such a big gap between their abilities. This made her even more suspicious and the instincts in the back of her head kept screaming that something was wrong. It even had to be known that they were both nineteen and she was still currently at rank-7, though she just needed a bit of a push to reach the next one.
Ann, however, could only use her arms to block the beam afterwards as she hadn't expected this outcome. She, of course, didn't have the luxury to simply think how off-putting everything had been so far.
The impact subsequently slammed into her, causing her to be pushed a few meters back. But other than slight bruises on her arms, there was no injury. Obviously, her sigil was that of armor. It had to do its job and so far, it appeared to do so. Even Kingsley was shocked for a second before preparing another attack.
However, how would Ann let that happen? She directly activated one of her sigil's rune formations to increase her speed, wings of light. The small pair of wings appeared on her ankles, and in the next second, she flashed and reappeared in front of Kingsley who was a few dozen meters away.
He was shocked, but recovered quickly enough to unleash his attack prematurely. However, that didn't do anything whatsoever and the lightning simply dispersed on her armor.
Then, with a simple punch to the gut, the impact sent him flying. He flew through multiple trees, snapping them as he went. Finally, after losing enough momentum, a tree caught him without breaking.
Looking down, he saw a scorched hole in his robe and a patch of red skin. The skin quickly turned gray as it blistered and leaked pus. Luckily, if it wasn't for his rank, this would be a hole right now. After all, the body grows with the soul, especially since it is nourished by its juice constantly. At this rank, even lifting half a ton didn't require too much effort.
The pain from the injury, as well as slamming into all those trees, assaulted his brain, and this only made him even more angry as he did not expect today to go this way.
So, he got up and summoned another orb in his mouth. Activating another rune formation, he sent out another beam of lightning. But this time, the beam immediately split into nearly a hundred blue snakes that slithered across the sky towards Ann. The lightning they were made of crackled and the trees they passed through were left partially carbonized.
Ann, seeing this, knew she couldn't underestimate them, so she immediately took action. Rather than activating another rune formation, she simply strengthened her gauntlets with more juice. With the armor's nature attributed to her juice, it fused into the gauntlets, making them grow bigger and bulkier. The fingers grew longer and the tips grew sharper as well.
When they came, she directly slashed at them, making lines of light that cut through the air and sliced the snakes in half. After a few seconds of fighting and some mistakes, she came out mostly unscathed except for some more bruises on her legs and a few on her side.
With the snakes out of the way, she approached Kingsley slowly, as if to let him wallow in the fact that he failed to beat her, but she became more suspicious as he was still calm.
It was almost as if he was letting her come over.
And her suspicions, after she covered a certain distance, was almost immediately confirmed after he spoke.
"You have done well… so far. You have proved to be able to get in my way far too many times already."
"But, even if you're able to cover for your little friends…"
"Can you cover for yourself?"
And immediately afterwards, the mid-afternoon sky seemed to roll over into darkness.
Let the second act, begin.